Database
by Akktri
Summary: A kid stumbles upon secret magic in his grandpa's farm.
1. Chapter 1: Timmy

Seventy years have passed since anyone has, in all seriousness, transcribed a tale of a child entering Narnia. This is not to say that it hasn't happened, for doorways to Narnia are opening all the time in different forms and in different locations all over the globe, around China and North Korea especially. I am only stating a very obvious fact that, indeed, thorough documentation about any true adventures in the lands of Narnia have not existed after the passing of the original chronicler, Clive Staples Lewis.

Imagine my surprise upon finding a printed book full of Narnia stories in the bottom of a cardboard box in my parents' messy basement.

The cover was in terrible condition, dog eared and bent, the pages just barely hanging together, but the stories inside were still incredible and worth sharing.

With the utmost care, I brought the book up to my room, making scans of the individual pages with an Optical Character Recognition program, at times typing by hand when the computer wouldn't cooperate.

It took months to put it all together. I assembled it into a pretty new book, shipped copies off to every publisher I could think of, and they universally rejected it. "The story is great," they would tell me. "But you need to lose the lion and all the magical parts."

Giving up on the whole endeavor, I instead posted the material on the internet. Still they hated it. "I'm familiar with the original story, and it is better," they said. "Why can't you make it exactly like the original?" And still others said, "Take the lion out of it. No one likes the lion."

I make no apologies. These words are not mine, I am only sharing the contents of that one mangled book, one piece at a time. If I find others beneath the multitudinous piles of clothing, newspaper clippings, magazines, billing statements and dog toys, I will be sure to share them as well. For the time being, however, I will share the first chapter of this extraordinary tale, entitled, "Database."

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[0000]

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The farm belonging to Danny's grandpa wasn't any fun at all. Miles away from civilization it had no livestock, and you couldn't walk more than a foot without having a tick crawling up your leg. The place had a pond, but it was all algae and mosquitoes so you couldn't even go swimming.

They had a black and white TV, no cable, internet, or even a VCR.

Danny's folks had dropped he and his brother off there for the summer, but they really didn't have that much in the way of entertainment. The barn didn't have enough hay for a good jump, and every time he told gramps he was bored, he ended up picking gooseberries, mowing a lawn with a push mower, or doing practice assignments for the upcoming school year.

And then there was the ramshackle old house with all the stray cats.

Grandpa had parked his mobile home behind the back porch and built sort of a wing to connect them together. He built it in such a way that you could still see the end of the old roof, a favorite place for the cats. Truthfully, the trailer was the better of the two - not as much dust, loose floorboards and peeling wallpaper.

The house scared Danny, but from time to time he got asked to go in there for various things. Today grandma said he could have ice cream if he got it out of the deep freezer, so he reluctantly went in.

Danny knew where the fridge was, but grandpa had neglected to change the light bulb in the front hallway, and there was so much junk blocking the windows that it looked shadowy and forbidding even during the afternoon.

"Why are you stopping?" his brother Tim asked behind him. "The freezer's right around the corner."

Tim held a calico cat in his arms, playing with its tail. It growled at him and ran off into the darkness.

"It's dark, okay?" Danny stammered. "I didn't want to stumble over a pipe or a carpet or whatever else grandpa's got lying around."

"You're scared," Timmy mocked. "Bawk bawk bawk!"

"Shut up!" Dan shouted. "I'm not scared-"

A brightly colored rubber ball bounced down the staircase, rolling into an adjoining hallway. Trembling, Danny glanced up a floor and found a pair of glowing eyes staring back at him from the darkness. He let out a scream.

"Meow!" a ball of fuzz darted past him, into the wing. Timmy laughed at him.

"How'd that ball get up there in the first place?" Danny asked. "Cat's don't have-"

Hearing a yelp, he turned around just in time to see a dark shape pulling Tim through an opened basement door.

"Tim?"

Grandpa had a lot of antique World War II stuff gathering dust around the place, including one of those old bayonet rifles. Danny didn't know how to fire one, or even find the bullets, but it had a pointy blade at one end, so he picked it up, preparing to face whatever monsters lurked in the dark.

He descended a narrow concrete staircase, entering a small work room.

The walls were covered in old faded brown maps, paintings of unicorns, dragons and lions, knights in armor and heraldic symbols. A few of the maps had been spread out on a work bench.

Hearing a strange whirring noise, he looked up and saw a closed circuit TV camera turning to face him.

What was that doing in the basement? he wondered as he stared at its angry glowing light. And where is-

"Timmy!" he called.

Suddenly a section of the wall slid open, and a massive computer monitor came rolling out on a conveyor, accompanied by a dot matrix printer.

The screen came to life, a one word message in white text flashing across its bright blue background.

NARNIA.


	2. Chapter 2: LOGOS

A new message flashed on the screen:

ENTER COMMAND PROMPT

Danny nervously approached the glowing machine, fingers tracing an arc through the layer of dust accumulated on its surfaces.

It looked like something from the dawn of computers, a cathode ray tube monitor with a pair of plastic heavy lidded cartoon eyes affixed above the glass.

He looked around for the keyboard, but only found a dot matrix printer with googly eyes. "What _is_ all this?"

I AM LOGOS, the machine silently answered.

"It's one of those voice activated things!"

CORRECT.

Danny frowned. "That would be great if I wanted to play Tic Tac Toe. What do you got in there, one megabyte of memory?"

YOU'D BE SURPRISED.

"Okay, if you're so smart, where's my brother?"

The printer came to life, rattling noisily for an entire minute.

The boy rushed to the device, gawking at the sprocket fed sheets wiggling out.

YOUR BROTHER HAS BEEN CAPTURED BY THE DARKNESS.

Danny shivered. "You mean like what's under my bed when the lights are off?"

The machine rattled. NO, SOMETHING FAR WORSE. IT COMES FROM A WORLD BEYOND THIS ONE, CORRUPTING EVERYTHING IT TOUCHES.

He paled. "What can I do to get him back?"

YOU MUST ENTER NARNIA AND TRAVEL TO THE COUNTRY OF THE HURUTS. BUT BE FOREWARNED: GREAT DANGER AWAITS.

"What are Huruts?"

The machine did not respond.

Instead, a section of the wall slid open, revealing a long gray tunnel.

"What's in there?" the boy wondered aloud.

NARNIA, the screen flashed.

"Oh _now_ you answer me!"

The monitor turned blank.

"You want me to go in there?"

The printer engaged in a long rattling frenzy. When it had at last finished its job, Danny found a map on the roller.

An arrow on the monitor directed him to the tunnel.

Swallowing a lump, the boy tore the map away from the ream, cautiously creeping down the corridor.

About halfway to its end, Danny heard the wall grinding shut behind him.

He rushed back the way he came, shouting and pounding on the concrete, but the wall refused to budge.

The boy was trapped, his only route of escape somewhere at the opposite end of the tunnel.

Worse, something had caught fire. Great clouds of black smoke billowed in from parts unknown, tongues of flame licking in the shadows.

And the machine had sent him there to find his brother!


	3. Chapter 3: Dreamcloud and Starflower

Danny coughed as he stumbled forward into the smoke, pulled his shirt over his face to filter the air a little.

His eyes watered as he squinted in the dark cloud, but he could see bits of things illuminated by fire light, clusters of wigwams with blazing thatched roofs, panicking horses and horse sized rabbit-like beasts galloping away from the flames, blackened corpses of animals, many riddled with arrows.

Seeing a break in the conflagration, he ran ahead, entering, ironically enough, a tribal fire ring, one that the tongues of flame did not encroach upon.

He didn't know that a tree had caught fire until he saw it toppling his way.

A black shape darted out of the smoke, ramming into the boy like a football player. The bayonet flew out of Danny's hands as he landed in the dirt outside the encampment.

He didn't know he'd been spared an untimely death until he saw the tree crashing down on the fire ring.

Out of the brilliant glare of the fire, Danny couldn't see much of his rescuer, just a half naked greenish warty body.

"You foolish creature!" it yelled. "What were you doing, trying to get yourself killed?"

"N-no, sir! I just...I'm looking for my brother..."

Danny saw the corners of a large mouth, illuminated by moonlight, turning downward. "I did not see anything that looked like you in our camp."

Danny got up, brushing himself off. "No little kids like me? Anywhere?"

The warty thing shook its head. "You need to go home. It isn't safe."

"I'm not going home without my brother."

The stranger sighed, adjusted a knife strap dangling from the side of his breechcloth.

As Danny's eyes focused, he began to piece things together. Although humanoid, and a foot taller than himself, the creature had large swollen eyes, webbed fingers and toes, and a bulging pouch of flesh around its neck. "You're...a frog!"

"No, I am a _Nuncila_ ," the creature said in a disdainful tone. "Of the tribe _Mudepa_. You seem very simple. Do you live under a rock?"

"Help!"

The Nuncila rushed into a field behind one of the wigwams, seeming not to care if Danny were with him or not. The boy panicked, keeping so close to the creature's heels that it yelled at him for stepping on its feet.

They raced through grass, bolted over rocks, pausing briefly behind a massive lapine creature tied to a post.

"What's going on here?" Danny asked as he watched the Nuncila digging a bow and arrow out of the big rabbit's saddlebag.

"We're under attack, that's what." The creature strapped an archer's brace to his wrist, fastened a leather pouch around his waist. "I don't want to hear another sound from you. Is that understood?"

Danny frowned. "Why-"

"If you insist on following me, you're going to have to do what I say. Now shut up or I'll leave you behind."

The boy did what he was told, trailing the creature through a stretch of muddy soil.

Ahead, Danny saw a monster strangling an owl chick with its massive gnarled green-brown hands. A warty green face with long pointy ears and yellow serrated teeth grinned as the bird gasped for air, flailing its legs and arms around, helplessly flapping its wings.

"Put him down!" the frog thing croaked, nocking an arrow. 

The monster only let out a gurgling laugh, held up the owl like a shield. 

Mr. Nuncila pulled the arrow all the way to the side of his face and let go. 

The projectile buried itself in the owl's feathery shoulder. The victim screamed. 

The monster chuckled, tossing the wounded owl into the mud.

A second later, he lay dead with three arrows in his chest. 

The frog hurried to the owl's side, yanking out the arrow out. As blood gushed from the wound, the frog's scaly green hands poured a bottle of something on the wound, then stitched it up with needle and thread. 

"Dreamcloud!" the owl cried. "You saved me!" 

"Yes, Starflower. I am sorry I had to hurt you." 

"What happened, Dreamcloud? What was that monster?" 

"I do not know."

The bird stared at Danny. "What is that thing you've brought with you?" 

The frog pulled the owl up on his feet. "We must get away from here. It is not safe." 

"But what about mother and father?" 

"Come with me, and hurry! Once you are safe, I will return to save them."

He glanced at Danny, wrinkled his face like he'd just smelled something unpleasant. "You too, White Thing. I somehow doubt you will be able to survive without my protection."


End file.
